‘Lord Avebury used the chamber to advocate many pioneering causes, including outlawing the offence of blasphemous libel and caste discrimination, and legalising gay marriage.’
Photograph: Paul Davey/Demotix/Corbis

“Piss and wind” was the late Lord Avebury’s opinion of the standard of debate around the House of Lords. Much of the reverence for the chamber is based on romanticised idealisation, he complained. The crusading hereditary peer – a champion of human rights throughout his 53 years in parliament – died this February, aged 87, prompting a special “byelection” to replace him. As his youngest son and an expert in politics respectively, we know he didn’t think much of the Lords, often saying that the only three subjects guaranteed to get a full chamber were: “Lords reform, fox hunting and buggery”.

Yet despite arguing for its abolition, Avebury used the chamber as a platform to advocate many pioneering causes, including outlawing the offence of blasphemous libel and caste discrimination, legalising gay marriage, allowing children of unmarried British citizens to claim citizenship, exposing the Sandline arms affair, repealing the Sus laws, and ending detention of children in asylum centres. He took up the cases of thousands of refugees and prisoners, and supported liberation struggles worldwide. Even the greatest champions of liberalism would have a hard time filling his shoes – and the assortment of hoteliers and fast-food entrepreneurs standing to succeed him don’t seem to quite measure up.

This farcical election has seven candidates standing for one place – and an electorate of just three voters

On Tuesday we will learn the results of the byelection to succeed him. Avebury was one of 92 hereditary peers spared the axe after the Blair government’s 1999 “phase one” of Lords reform (although “phase two” never materialised). The “special status” for the 92 hereditaries was never intended to last this long – it was a short-term compromise between the Blair government and the Conservatives’ then-leader in the Lords, Viscount Cranborne (who was promptly sacked for making the deal), aimed at breaking the gridlock between Labour legislation passed in the Commons and an Upper House then dominated by Conservatives.

At the time, it was expected that these 92 hereditaries would have maybe three or four years left, before “phase two” Lords reform abolished them entirely, and elected most (or all) of Britain’s second chamber. Yet 17 years on, the Blair government is long gone, while 92 hereditaries linger on – 63 of them having continuously sat for the last 17 years.

This will be the 29th byelection to the House of Lords since the 1999 system was introduced; an average of 1.7 a year, and given the Lords’ age demographic, we will see many more in the coming years. Some 23 have been caused by death, and six by the retirement procedures only introduced in 2014.

This farcical election has seven candidates standing for one place – and an electorate of just three voters. Even the most notorious “pocket borough” of Old Sarum had a comparatively large 11 voters. Those voting for the Lords vacancy have a choice between two third barons, a fourth baron, a third viscount, a fourth earl, a seventh earl, and a 13th earl. The voters themselves consist of Patrick, 10th earl of Glasgow, Raymond, third earl of Oxford and Asquith, and Dominic, sixth Baron Addington. Hustings might have been held in a telephone booth, with room to spare.

Candidates were asked to submit a 75-word statement, some of which verge on the farcical. At the last such byelection, the unsuccessful earl of Limerick wrote his manifesto in rhyme, while Lord Biddulph’s entire manifesto consisted of the sentence: “It would be an honour to serve.” In this latest example, one of the frontrunners, defeated ex-MP Viscount Thurso, hasn’t submitted a manifesto at all. It is hard to think of a less fitting testament to the life’s work of Eric Avebury.

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Avebury dies aged 87

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Since Avebury first entered parliament as an MP in 1962, many glaring social injustices in British society have been corrected. Yet this has served to make the remaining disparities in Britain’s political system ever more apparent. It is now 155 years since JS Mill published On Representative Government, setting out the case for proportional representation. It was a cause Avebury’s ancestor (the first Lord Avebury, John Lubbock) championed, setting up the Proportional Representation Society, and Avebury often lamented that PR had never become a reality in Britain.

He had little time for the hereditary principle, and did not want to see it continue. In 2008, Avebury tabled an amendment to eliminate hereditary positions after each peer’s death – but it was defeated. He wrote on his blog: “A more irrational and absurd way of making appointments would be difficult to imagine, but I know already, from a conversation with a very senior Tory, that they will do their best to scupper even this tiny step forward.”

If reforming parties such as the Liberal Democrats want to be taken seriously, they should not embrace the mockery of this anachronistic election. Refusing to fill Avebury’s place would be a far more fitting tribute to his legacy. At a time when all political parties remain tarnished in the public eye, some moral leadership in boycotting this ludicrous election would have been welcome.

• This article was amended on 18 April to make clear that Lord Avebury advocated to outlaw the offence of blasphemous libel.